The politics of millennials spring from their worldview, podcast host Allie Beth Stuckey told social conservatives Friday in Washington.
When people reject belief in God, Stuckey told the crowd at the Values Voter Summit, they usually embrace belief in government.
“I have never seen someone move to the left politically and become stronger theologically,” the host of the “Relatable” podcast said, as the crowd listened attentively.
Those who base their worldviews on self eventually make government more powerful and intrusive, Stuckey, 27, said.
“Godlessness and socialism, godlessness and totalitarianism, godlessness and big government always go hand in hand,” she said.
After interviews with many fellow millennials as a podcast host, Stuckey said, she sees that the generation’s worldview leads to meaninglessness. If people believe only in themselves, they have nothing outside themselves to live for and no belief in a God who can reform the self, she said.
“I think a lot of young people are saying, ‘That’s not really working out for me.’ Millennials have a higher rate of suicide,” she said. “They have a higher rate of depression, they have a higher rate of anxiety and fear and loneliness [than past generations.]”
From this place of despair, millennials often hope that government will help them fix their problems.
“This replacing of the God of Scripture with the god of self has to do with why young people lean to the left,” Stuckey says. “If you don’t believe in a transcendent Creator who gave us inherent rights, you have to look to another authority to give you your rights, and that’s the government.”
Because of this worldview difference, conservatives need to talk about more than policies with millennials, she said. Without a foundation in a worldview that goes beyond the self, policies mean little.
“It’s like the parable of the man building his house on the sand. When the rains come, it’s just going to go tumbling down because you don’t have a firm foundation for your worldview,” she said, referencing a story Jesus tells in the New Testament.
When people change their worldviews, everything changes for them, she argued. This is why a worldview based on living for God is one that values freedom and changes people’s lives.
“That’s what we talk about on my podcast, that’s why it’s called ‘Relatable,’” she told the crowd. “Because it relates to people that are trying to build a coherent worldview on something other than themselves.”
The annual Values Voter Summit, which runs Friday through Sunday at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, was created in 2006 to help inform and mobilize Americans to preserve the “bedrock values” of religious liberty, the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and limited government. Since its inception, the primary sponsor has been FRC Action, the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council.
